


Dung Beetle Sonata

by ghaskan



Category: New Dangan Ronpa V3: Everyone's New Semester of Killing
Genre: Comedy, Dung Beetle Horror, Fluff, Gen, No Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-30
Updated: 2017-01-30
Packaged: 2018-09-20 22:47:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,491
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9519329
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ghaskan/pseuds/ghaskan
Summary: A mysterious sonata summons a population of beetles to the music room. Toujou Kirumi is faced with her biggest fear...(A continuation ofCockroach Waltz, but can be read as a standalone work)





	

Gokuhara Gonta was the only person in the music room. He had come a long way ever since Akamatsu first tutored him. Gokuhara was now able to play simpler pieces by ear, and would try to piece together his own music from time to time. However, Akamatsu strictly forbad him from playing music which had insects as a theme. Gokuhara did not understand why. Little did he know that his music was imbued with the same mysterious power that allowed the Pied Piper of Hamelin to attract mice; the only difference was that Gokuhara’s power attracted the insects the music paid tribute to. As soon as Gokuhara played the last note and became aware of his surrounding, however, the insects would disperse at the speed of light.

Gokuhara knew that a gentleman must not break his promises. But he found himself unable to avoid that sin, seeing as he was seething with ideas for the piano piece about dung beetles the world had yet to be blessed with.

* * *

At first, a single dung beetle made its way to the music room, all the while rolling dung into a perfectly spherical shape. Then another followed suit. And another. Before long, an entire population of dung beetles flowed into the music room to attend Gokuhara’s recital.

Toujou Kirumi, who had been dutifully sweeping the hallways to the best of her ability (it was tough to clean the places overrun by overgrown grass), was the first to witness the dung beetles’ pilgrimage. Toujou covered her mouth with a hand as if to contain a scream. The scream never found a chance to escape Toujou’s lips, however. The stench released by the rolling excrements was so overwhelming that it caused her to faint before she could call for help.

* * *

The Super High School Level Robot Kiibo stared coldly at the dung beetle invasion. Not that he knew what a dung beetle was. In his mind, he was looking at creatures about 3 centimeters long and 2 centimeters wide. They possessed leathery, black skin, which shone under the school’s electrical lighting. The dark brown spheres they rolled under their three pairs of legs were far larger than their diminutive bodies. Nonetheless, no matter how Kiibo queried his database, he could find no information pertaining to what his artificial eyes were seeing. He tried querying the professor’s cloud database, but his wireless connection could still not reach out to the Internet. What his database could tell him was how to react in this situation. He let out a long, drawn-out sigh of frustration.

Next to him was Shirogane Tsumugi, a taller than average girl with long cerulean hair, standing with her head slightly tilted as she too stared at the alien creatures. Kiibo’s AI raced at a speed the human mind could only dream of as it performed an almost infinite number of complicated calculations. At last, he came to the conclusion that humans could serve as external databases, even if they were unreliable at best.

“Shirogane-san, what do you suppose those creatures are?” Kiibo asked.

“Hmm…” Shirogane rested her tilted head on her right hand as she rummaged her mind for hints. “You know…” She clasped her hands together and her eyes shone in a way Kiibo could only describe as ominous. “I think they might be Susuwatari! Who would have guessed that they are real?” Shirogane leaned in closer to Kiibo, who took a step back to conserve a safe distance. “Did you know that Susuwatari are _youkai_ first devised by Miyazaki-sensei to use in his movie _My Neighbor Totoro_?”

If Kiibo had saliva, he would have gulped. His calculations decided that it was best to follow the path of least resistance and listen to Shirogane’s endless rant about this “Miyazaki-sensei”.

Meanwhile, dung beetles were registered as _youkai_ in Kiibo’s database.

* * *

Akamatsu Kaede was heading to the music room for her daily practice. To her surprise, a disgusting stench invaded her nostrils as she got closer to the hallway leading to that room. Then, her sensitive ears caught on a clumsy melody with notes that could only belong to…

Moving as fast as her legs would allow her to, Akamatsu ran to the music room. Then, she saw them…

The dung beetles.

The dung beetles were not the only beings in the hallway, however. Toujou-san was laying on the floor, her senses seemingly lost. Akamatsu guessed that seeing so much dung was the reason behind her fainting, so she decided to solve the root of the problem before attempting to reanimate Toujou-san.

Akamatsu slammed the door to the music room open. Sitting with the piano in front of him and his back turned to the entrance was Gokuhara Gonta. It would seem that not even the loud bang of the opening doors was effective in dispelling his music-induced trance. Akamatsu decided to resort to a final, desperate move.

“I HATE INSECTS!!!” Akamatsu yelled with all her might.

It took a moment, but then Gokuhara’s playing ceased abruptly. And just like that, both the beetles and the dung were all gone, as if they were parts of a dream. Gokuhara rose up from his seat, and turned to face Akamatsu.

“Akamatsu-san?” Gokuhara blinked his eyes. “Did… did Gonta hear it right? Was Akamatsu-san saying she hated Gonta’s insect friends?”

A cold drop of sweat dripped off Akamatsu’s face as she readied her lie. “Uh? What are you talking about, Gonta-kun? No one has said anything.”

“Is that so?” Gokuhara let out a sigh, then put his hands on his hips and beamed brightly. “Gonta is so glad! He would be so sad if Akamatsu-san did not like insects…” Then, he began avoiding Akamatsu’s eyes and fidgeting with his fingers. “Um, why did Akamatsu-san come here?”

“Gonta-kun, you’re a terrible liar.” Akamatsu approached Gokuhara and, as she stood on tiptoe to raise her height, she pulled his right ear. Akamatsu did not put much strength into the pull, but Gokuhara knew he had been caught and he felt guilt needling him.

“Gonta is… Gonta is very, very sorry,” Gokuhara sobbed.

Akamatsu released Gokuhara’s ear and sighed. “It’s partially my fault too, Gonta-kun… I should have told you about your power sooner.”

“Power?”

“Yes,” Akamatsu said, “The power of the Pied Pieper of Hamelin…”

Akamatsu told him about the incident with the cockroaches. When she was finished, Gokuhara could not help but let out a loud “Oh!”. Who would have known you could talk to insects with music? That was fantastic!

“Indeed! But, for now… we need to help Toujou-san.”

* * *

After Gokuhara had helped Akamatsu by carrying Toujou to her room, as well as showering the latter with all variants of “I’m sorry” he knew, he went back to the music room by himself. Not to wreck any further havoc, mind you, but to clean up. Unlike the cockroaches, the dung beetles had left a slight trace behind them, and Gokuhara could not bring himself to trouble Toujou further, even if she insisted it would be her pleasure to clean in his place. Akamatsu stayed behind with Toujou, to stop the maid from exerting herself by working before she could get some well-deserved rest.

Gokuhara did not expect to find anyone in the hallway leading to the music room, since a stench of dung still lingered in the air, but he found Kiibo, kneeling down, offering some colourful sweets to a creature with leathery skin…

The broom Gokuhara had been carrying fell from his hands to the floor as he ran towards the robot. “Kiibo-kun! Is that… is that a dung beetle?”

Dung beetle? Kiibo queried his database time and time again, but there was no information pertaining to dung beetles. Gokuhara must be mistaken. The creature was a _youkai_ which rolled a dark brown ball as it carried out its haunting. Kiibo did what any sensible person would have done in this scenario (at least according to the information Shirogane had forced on him), and retrieved some _konpeito_ from the cafeteria to feed to the _youkai_ lingering in the hallway. Kiibo offered Gokuhara his best impression of a confused expression.

In Gokuhara’s eyes, however, there was no _youkai_ , only a dung beetle, a dung beetle lucky enough to be fed delicious sweets. No ordinary person (or robot) would perform such an act of charity. That was it! Kiibo had to be a fellow bug-lover, someone Gokuhara could both love and respect.

Before Kiibo had time to react, he had a pair of strong arms wrapped around his frame. He was being squeezed and caressed and he was sure that if his body wasn’t composed of solid metal he would have been crushed to death, at least if the numbers shown by his pressure sensors served as any indication.

The dung beetle, for its part, finished its meal and rolled away on top of a ball of dung, following the trail to Toujou’s room Gokuhara had left behind…

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading, hope you enjoyed it!
> 
> This time I'll replace the usual characterization disclaimer with a little plug-in. I like writing our beloved entomologist so much that I've created a Gonta Ask/RP blog. You can visit it here: https://excitingentomology.tumblr.com/


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